


Within the Realm of the Gods

by joudama



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 16:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18286106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joudama/pseuds/joudama
Summary: Gladiolus knew death could come at any instant - peopledied. It’s what theydid. Even Noct - he knew when Noct came back, it was going to be to die. The destined last of his line; Gladio’d known almost as long as he’d known Noct that that was how it was going end.Butthatwas something very different fromthis.





	Within the Realm of the Gods

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place right before chapter 14, and I do not buy the “everybody BUT Noct lived!” thing.

“So, uh...I’m pretty sure I’m dying.”

His words were quiet, and Prompto was looking everywhere except at Gladiolus.

 _“Excuse me?”_ Gladiolus let out sharply. “Prompto, what the fuck?! That's...that's not funny."

Gladiolus sat up straight, and his breathing was...it wasn’t right. He could hear his own breathing, and hear his own heartbeat pounding in his chest. 

Prompto still wasn't looking at him. "I'm not joking," he said in a small voice.

“Prompto, _what are you talking about?_ ”

His voice sounded strange to his own ears, and he wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like.

Prompto just looked at his hands. Or rather, his wrist - at the barcode in stark relief against the pale skin of his wrist, even against the light of the campfire.

“I’m dying,” he said softly. 

And with those words, Gladio’s world turned upside down.

Again.

—

There were many events that had turned Gladio’s world upside down.

Insomnia falling had been the biggest. That had been the world changing in an instant; the one thing that had seemed the most impossible, the most out of the blue, the most heretofore unthinkable. The Empire had always been a threat, but that had been...out _there_. Yeah, members of the Glaive from outside of Insomnia had talked abut it, but...it wasn’t inside the walls of the city. Insomnia had stood for over a thousand years. Insomnia falling, his father killed, and Noctis the new king...everything he knew had changed in one news headline.

The realization that Noctis wasn’t coming back soon had been the slowest. That had been first days, then weeks, then months, of waiting for Noctis to return, of seeing the world growing darker and darker until eventually it was nothing but night, and the dawning realization that Noctis wasn’t coming back today...or tomorrow...or perhaps _not within his own lifetime._ He knew Noctis would come back, one day, but...he no longer knew if he’d actually be alive to see it. The gods reckoned time on a wholly different scale from mortals, and accepting that it Ardyn had lived 2,000 years, and might live another 2,000 more before Noctis came back had been...hard.

But that...this was...this was something else entirely.

He jumped to his feet. He needed to be...not here. 

“I need to go...hit something,” he said, his words feeling foolish and inadequate, and just Prompto nodded.

“Yeah. I mean...yeah, ok,” he said, still not looking at Gladio. Gladio felt suddenly like the world’s biggest heel, like he was reacting the wrong way but...

He needed to hit something. Hit it a _lot_ until it stopped moving.

Maybe then he’d be able to...he didn’t even know.

 _You’re running away_ , a small voice in his head said.

“I’ll just...wait here, OK? And...sorry. I shouldn’t‘ve...I’m sorry.”

 _You’re running away_ , the small voice in his head said again, and Gladio didn’t argue as he left.

—

There was an abandoned stone building nearby, full of monsters that needed killing, and he ran into a whole herd of imps not fifteen minutes after he got there...then had the bad luck of tripping over a mindflayer.

Or perhaps it had been the mindflayer’s bad luck, because with the mood Gladio was in, focusing on making sure the mindflayer was stomped into dust meant that Gladio was not about to leave without that happening.

When the fight was over, when there was only silence and the sound of his own slowing breathing, and the adrenaline was no longer singing in his veins, Gladio crashed and crashed and crashed _hard_.

 _“I’m pretty sure I’m dying_.”

“...Dammit,” Gladio said, as his legs seemed to give out from under him. The fight with the mindflayer had been hard, and suddenly, he was exhausted. He leaned against a crumbling stone wall. “ _Dammit_.”

Prom had to be mistaken. It was...it was possible maybe that something was wrong with him, that he was sick or something, but... _dying_? Prompto almost never even caught _colds_ , so how could something be wrong with him? The scrawny hyperactive little bastard was fucking genetically engineered, so how could he be _dying_?

He pressed the heel of his palms against his eyes, until bright spots erupted behind his eyelids, then took a deep breath that turned disturbingly shuddery.

He knew death could come at any instant - people _died_. It’s what they _did_. Even Noct - he knew when Noct came back, it was going to be to die. The destined last of his line; Gladio’d known almost as long as he’d known Noct that that was how it was going end.

But _that_ was something different from _this_. He was ready to say good-bye to Noct, if he ever saw him again, but...but he wasn’t ready for this. This was out of fucking _nowhere_ and...

“...shit.”

He put his hand against his mouth, and just tried to _breathe_.

—

He couldn’t stay there for too long - it was quiet for now, but no area cleared of monsters stayed that way for long.

And if he stayed out here too long...

He was back to feeling like a heel again, because yeah, he’d run away like a damn coward, and who the fuck knew what Prom had to be thinking, or feeling, right now.

“ _And...sorry. I shouldn’t‘ve...I’m sorry._ ”

...yeah. He was a fucking heel. 

He hauled himself to his feet, and headed back to camp.

—

When he got back, Prompto was sitting in on the ground to the fire, poking at listlessly with a stick and surrounded by old photographs. 

Gladio didn’t say anything, just dropped himself into to the ground in a clear spot next to him.

Prompto startled slightly, looking over at him in surprise, then flinching slightly and looking back at the fire.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Prompto said back, then swallowing. “Look, I...look, just forget I said anything. I shouldn’t’ve, and I don’t even know if I’m...Look, just...sorry.”

Gladio was the biggest heel who had ever lived.

“No. Stop. This is...I reacted badly, and that’s on me,” Gladio said heavily. “Whatever this is, you should’ve told me, and I shouldn’t’ve had run off like a damn coward.”

Prompto didn’t say anything, just poked at the fire again.

“And I can’t just forget...I mean...why...you...why do you think you’re dying?” 

He words felt like they were being ripped out of his throat. “You can’t just....you can’t just drop something like that on someone and not...no, I’m doing this wrong, but...aaarrrggh,” he ended with, digging the heels of his palms back into his eyes. “Talk to me, Prom.”

It was easier to get the words out this way, somehow, not looking at him.

“How did we first meet?” Prompto asked, and there was something almost...desperate in his voice.

That wasn’t what he’d been expecting, and he looked up.

“Prom...why are you asking me that?”

“Because I don’t remember,” he said, and when Prompto looked away from the fire, at him, there was something in his eyes that made Gladiolus’ heart and throat tighten up. “I can’t...I can’t remember it. I can’t remember when we met. And lately, when I look at all these photographs...I can’t remember...I can’t...” His words hitched in his throat. “And when I look in the mirror, I don’t look right. Something’s not right. I don’t know what it is, I can’t tell you what it is, but something’s....something’s not right. I’ve been feeling tireder and tireder, and like it’s harder and harder to keep my energy up, and to act like nothing’s wrong and like I’m fine when it’s like something’s crumbling on the inside,” he said, the words sounding desperate and coming faster and faster, like he had to get them out. 

His shoulders suddenly slumped. “And it’s getting worse. I didn’t want to...it took me so long to even think it, but it’s like it’s gnawing at my brain no matter how much I tried to deny it.”

Prompto took a deep breath.

“Go on,” Gladio said, and his voice sounded strange. His heart felt like that mindflayer had turned it to stone, but he wouldn’t run away again.

“There’s...I can’t explain it,” Prompto said, his shoulders hunching in. “But I’ve felt it for the last year or so. It started...slowly. And I didn’t want to...think about it? I felt like I was...I guess deteriorating is the right word? Maybe? Yeah. It started slow, but then...” He swallowed thickly. “The last two months, everything got worse faster. I don’t even know how to explain it.”

“Why do you think you’re dying? Have you seen a doctor or anything?”

“No. I don’t want to...it’s...and I just know,” he said softly. “I’ve gone...downhill and can’t lie to myself about it anymore. You know...you know I was a clone. The Niflheim Empire made me to be a soldier. To be...canon fodder. But you...you don’t need canon fodder that gets old.” His voice caught on his words. “I don’t think I’m meant to get old,” he said, and his eyes were shiny. “I think I’m...nearing the end of my use,” he said, and his breath started hitching.

He looked up at Gladio, something pleading in his eyes, pleading _desperately_ to be believed. “I can’t lie to myself anymore. And I...I didn’t want to lie to you anymore, either.”

Gladio didn’t know how a look could make him feel like he’d been stabbed in the stomach by a yojimbo, but there it was. And the force of that look cause him to take a long, long look at Prompto, and his lungs felt like they didn’t remember how to work right.

He...he could see it now. Could see the way Prompto was paler than he used to be, the reddish bags under his eyes that had become perpetual, the way his eyes were more sunken-in than before.

He didn’t want this to be true.

“We face death every day,” Gladiolus said, then trailed off. “Every single day could be our last.”

“But this is different,” Prompto said with a voice that wavered in a way that made Gladio want to make it so it never did that again, and he nodded, not trusting his own voice.

Prompto started shaking, and Gladio stood up and gathered all the photos on the ground. He handed them to Prompto, then he settled himself behind him, wrapping himself around the smaller man.

Prompto was warm against his chest as Gladio, and the idea of him dying was...he...

“Show me the ones you don’t remember, and I’ll tell you everything I do.”

Prompto let out a long shuddering breath, and Gladio wrapped his arms around Prompto’s thin shoulders and rested his chin on his shoulder.

There were few things that Gladio had ever found himself praying for. He’d been taught early that prayers rarely came without cost, because nothing was without sacrifice when it came to the realm of the gods. But he often prayed for Noct to come back from the Crystal, and to bring back the light, even though he knew what it would mean.

Now...now he prayed for something else. For Prompto to be _wrong_. He didn’t want to think about it, about Prompto dying _soon_.

So, in that moment, he offered up to the gods one small prayer.

 _Please_ , he prayed, _let him stay with me, for however long I’ve got_.

His voice wavered, just slightly, when they looked at the first picture that Prompto stopped at for him to explain. “That one. Yeah. I remember that one, Chocobo Butt. That was at the original Kenny Crow. You insisted on stopping there for a picture.”

“...that nickname is never going to die, is it?”

“Nope.”

There was a long silence, then Prompto relaxed more into him, let Gladiolus take more of his weight, and leaned his head against him. “...I hate you.”

They sat like that through the long hours of the endless night, by the fire, looking through the old photographs, and Gladio prayed for a miracle.

 _Any_ miracle.

And perhaps that was why, on the next “day” of that unending night...Noct came back, and Gladio wondered if perhaps _both_ of his prayers hadn’t just been answered at once.

Because _nothing_ within the realm of the gods came without sacrifice.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was originally written a Promptio zine called “Just You + Me.” Feel free to give the whole zine a look; here’s a link to the tweet about it with a link to both the SFW and NSFW zine. I will admit to this version here being a bit cleaned up, since I originally wrote it in a last minute rush the week or so before I had to go to the hospital for surgery, and I was still in the hospital when the zine folks asked us to read through our contributions for corrections. I was like “Yeah, sure, looks fine where are my painkillers moving is ow” and missed a few things I ended up correcting here. ^^;


End file.
